MID-JULY 1944. Cherbourg has been captured, the damage to the port repaired. On July 19 the first supply ships start unloading. The Americans have landed a total of 770,000 troops in Normandy. They have suffered 73,000 casualties, which are more than compensated for by reserve divisions in England (including the 82d and 101st Airborne, which have been withdrawn from the Continent for refitting) waiting their chance to cross over and join the battle.
The British and Canadians have landed 591,000 troops, suffered 49,000 casualties, and also have reserve forces waiting to cross. The Germans, meanwhile, continue to hold the Fifteenth Army at the Pas de Calais, despite the overwhelming Allied commitment to Normandy, because they still overestimate Ike’s total force. The Wehrmacht has taken 116,863 casualties. In Normandy, the Germans have twenty-six divisions, many of them understrength, facing thirty-four Allied divisions.1
ALL GERMAN ATTEMPTS to drive the Allies off the Continent had failed miserably, partly because of poor generalship—they committed their reserves piecemeal, feeding them into the battle as soon as they arrived at the front—and partly because of ULTRA. Whenever the Germans did try to assemble forces for a major counterattack, ULTRA passed the word to Allied artillery, airmen, and naval forces, who together unleashed a horrendous bombardment on the assembly center.
Still, the Wehrmacht on the defensive remained a formidable foe. Winterbotham went to Normandy to see Bradley and check on the operation of the SLU system. Bradley thanked him and all those involved in ULTRA’S performance: “Never did I expect to get such concise information about my opponents,” he said, then added, “The only trouble is that there seems to be too many of them.”2
So, although he was in control of most of Normandy and was the winner in the battle of the buildup, as July drew to a close Ike was close to despair. Flying bombs were falling on London. Monty’s attempts to take Caen had failed, despite the massive application of air power. Bradley’s progress in the hedgerow country was agonizingly slow. After seven weeks of fighting, the deepest Allied penetrations were some thirty miles inland, on a front of only eighty miles. There was hardly enough room to maneuver or to bring in the reserves waiting in England. The Germans were fighting savagely, taking advantage of every piece of cover and laying mines with extraordinary skill.
The Wehrmacht was, however, stretched thin, too thin to keep up the fight much longer. ULTRA revealed that Hitler was ordering his generals to stay put, which indicated that they were asking him for permission to retreat.3 Fortunately for the Allies, Hitler decided that Rundstedt was a defeatist and replaced him with General Guenther von Kluge.
Even better, Rommel was wounded on July 17 when an Allied fighter strafed the staff car in which he was riding. He was then implicated in the July 20 plot against Hitler and eventually committed suicide to avoid the shame of a trial. Von Kluge assumed Rommel’s duties in addition to his other responsibilities, but Hitler did not trust Kluge either and therefore insisted on maintaining a tight personal control over his battle plans and actions. That situation forced the Germans to use the radio extensively, which was ideal for ULTRA.
Nevertheless, the Germans, in their fixed positions, with their panzers dug in, utilizing every fold of ground, most especially the famous hedgerows of Normandy, could not be dislodged. If the Allies could ever break through, they could use their air and transport superiority to launch a war of maneuver that would crush the Germans in France. The trick was to break through. In a sense the situation of 1940 had been reversed, with the Germans in the role of the immobile French at the Maginot Line and the Allies ready to begin a blitzkrieg of their own, if only they could crack the shell.
Bradley had a plan to force a breakout. It called for the massive use of air power in a manner that resembled a 1916-type offensive, with the bombers substituting for artillery to blast a hole through the German line. The big difference between Bradley’s plan, code name COBRA, and a World War I offensive was the relative thinness of the German line in 1944, coupled with the presence of American tanks to exploit the hole blasted in the line.
COBRA began on July 25. The tremendous bombardment left the Germans in a dazed condition. At the same time the Canadians, on the left, began a drive toward Falaise, which gained little ground but did pin down the panzers facing Montgomery. Meanwhile, General “Lightning Joe” Collins, a veteran of Guadalcanal, led his U. S. VII Corps to St. Lô, through the German lines, and broke out into the open countryside of France.
The Germans, finally, abandoned their idée fixe that the main landings would come at the Pas de Calais. Kluge obtained Hitler’s permission to transfer two divisions from the Fifteenth Army to Normandy. Hitler told Kluge to “keep his eyes riveted to the front and on the enemy without ever looking backward.”4 ULTRA picked up that signal, to Ike’s great delight, because it told him the Germans were doing exactly what he hoped they would do—stand in Normandy and take a beating there. What Eisenhower most feared was that the Germans would retire to the line of the Seine River, or perhaps all the way back to the Franco-German border, there to take up prepared defensive positions.
But with Hitler in charge, there was no danger of a German retreat. Ike counted on what he called Hitler’s “conqueror’s mentality.” He believed that Hitler, like most aggressive leaders, could not bring himself to give up land he had conquered. Throughout the war, Eisenhower took it for granted that his enemies would stand and fight, no matter how precarious their situation or how bad their position, rather than retreat to shorter, more easily defended lines. It was a leap into the mind of the man directing the battle from the other side of the hill, the kind of intelligence that comes from study and observation over a period of time, as well as from a study of history, rather than as the result of an intercepted radio message or a spy’s report.5
Collins’ breakthrough opened the way for a flow of reinforcements from England to France led by Patton. The situation was the culmination of a soldier’s dreams. Eisenhower had armored units loose in the enemy rear and they could go in any direction he wanted them to go. Patton might be sent east, toward Paris, or northeast, toward the German rear at Caen, or south into central France, or west into Brittany.
As Ike told Marshall on August 2, he now had a golden opportunity not only to defeat the German Army but to destroy it. Patton sent one corps into Brittany to get possession of the ports there; the other three corps of his Third Army sped southward from Avranches, with the ultimate intention of swinging around the exposed German left flank and encircling Kluge’s Seventh Army. The Third Army’s food, fuel, ammunition and other supplies had to come through the narrow bottleneck at Avranches.
At this moment, Hitler decided to counterattack. He ordered an offensive along the Mortain-Avranches axis on through to the coast. It was a brilliant strategic move that promised, if successful, to isolate Patton and possibly even drive the Allies back into the sea.
It was a gamble, and Hitler signaled to Kluge, “The decision in the Battle of France depends on the success of the Avranches attack. You have a unique opportunity, which will never return, to drive into an extremely exposed enemy area and thereby to change the situation completely.”6
To succeed, Hitler needed to convince Kluge that the plan would work. In this he failed. Hitler wanted to delay the counterattack until an imposing force of panzers had been gathered opposite Mortain, so that the blow, when it came, would be a strategic and not just a tactical one. But Kluge attacked five days ahead of schedule, precisely because he thought the best that could be attained would be minor changes in the front line, not a strategic turnaround. Furthermore, Kluge could not afford to pull more of his tanks off Monty’s front; he had already brought down to Normandy most of the armor in the Fifteenth Army, and in any case the combination of Allied air forces guided by ULTRA and the French Resistance made movement of units into Normandy too costly and time-consuming to be worth the effort.
The other element Hitler counted on for success was surprise. Here he was on much better ground, because the Allies were predisposed to believe that the Germans were fighting with their backs to the wall, thinking only about an orderly retreat to the Franco-German border, incapable of even contemplating, much less launching, a major counterattack. His plan was so bold, Hitler believed, that the Allies would never suspect it until too late. But thanks to ULTRA, Eisenhower and Bradley were able to fight a classic defensive battle, a textbook example of how to meet and throw back an armored attack.
The story began on August 3, when ULTRA picked up a Hitler-to-Kluge signal that read, “The armoured divisions which have up to now been employed on that front must be released and moved complete to the left wing. The enemy’s armoured forces [Patton’s Third Army] which have pressed forward to the east, south-east and south will be annihilated by an attack which these armoured formations—numbering at least four—will make, and contact will be restored with the west coast of the Contentin at Avranches—or north of that—without regard to the enemy penetrations in Brittany.”7
Everyone involved in the process of decoding, translating, interpreting, and disseminating ULTRA material realized immediately the import of this message. The SLUS got it to Eisenhower and SHAEF within the hour, while Winterbotham personally rang up Churchill with the intercept.
Ike’s deputy, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, as Winterbotham relates, “took the rather unprecedented step of ringing me up and, as he put it, ‘in view of the extreme importance of Hitler’s signal,’ asking if I would be quite certain that it was not a bluff. Again he said that the substance was of such importance that Eisenhower didn’t want to take any chances. I phoned Hut 3 [in Bletchley Park] to make quite sure that the original German version was in Hitler’s own distinctive style and language. They told me we had no reason to doubt it on any score, and the signal had without doubt come from Fuehrer headquarters. Tedder was satisfied.”8
So were Eisenhower and Bradley. They agreed at once to keep Patton driving forward, even sending more units through the narrow opening between Mortain and the coast while holding at Mortain with only one infantry division, the 30th, and two others in reserve.
The three Americans had all been outstanding athletes (Bradley in baseball, Patton in polo, Ike in football); all were West Pointers; they had been friends for nearly thirty years. Patton was the oldest, Bradley the youngest. Bradley had served under Patton’s command in Sicily; now Patton was under Bradley; it was a measure of their closeness that Ike never heard a word of complaint from either man about the relationship.
Patton and Bradley seemed to be exact opposites. Patton was a great actor, deliberately portraying the role of the ruthless soldier, swashbuckling, profane, insensitive. His frown was enough to scare a man half to death, his shouts were legendary. Bradley was quiet, self-effacing, never raised his voice, was considerate of his men, and shunned any hint of role-playing. Where Patton loved uniforms, with pearl-handled pistols sticking out on his hips, Bradley wore a simple Eisenhower jacket and plain pants.
But both men had much in common too, beginning with a belief in Ike and a willingness to trust him, no matter what. In addition, each man had dark, deep-set, penetrating eyes that missed nothing; a grim, determined, square chin; a broad, hard-set mouth; and a face that displayed singleness of purpose. The United States could well be proud of this trio of generals.
Eisenhower was with Bradley at his headquarters when Bradley made the decision to hold at Mortain. Ike approved his plan, Tedder recalled, “there and then. He told Bradley that if the Germans should temporarily break through from Mortain to Avranches and thus cut off Patton’s thrust, we could give the advance forces two thousand tons of supply per day by air.”9
How could the American leaders take such a risk, knowing that Hitler intended to attack with four armored divisions in the initial assault? Partly because air power could supply Patton and protect his flanks, more because of ULTRA. They were confident that the oracle of Bletchley Park would give sufficient advance warning of where, when, and in what strength the attack would come for them to prepare for it. What they were really depending on was that Hitler would try to control the battle and thus fill the air with radio signals.
By August 6, Kluge had three armored divisions ready at their jump-off points. Although well-camouflaged, for reasons that were inexplicable to the Germans, they were taking a terrific air and naval gun bombardment. In contrast to the usual daily personnel losses of about 3 percent for units in combat, the casualty reports for August 6 in the divisions scheduled for the attack reached heights of 40 percent.10
The Germans had to attack or fall back. Right after midnight, the engines of two hundred assault tanks roared into life and the Battle of Mortain was on. By daylight, the 2d ss Panzer Division had overun Mortain. There was no significant American opposition. The Germans assumed they had achieved complete surprise and gleefully began to drive beyond Mortain toward Avranches.
As they did so, and as the light strengthened, American artillery shells began to drop all around them, setting vehicles afire, kicking up dust, raising hell generally, forcing the panzers to seek cover, throw up camouflage, and dig in. On the flanks, the 1st SS Panzer Division and the 2d Panzer Division were going through similar experiences. The attack had come to a halt almost before it got started.
What had happened was that elements of the U. S. 30th Division had stayed on Hill 317, immediately east of Mortain, while other elements had thrown up road blocks that funneled the German tanks in predetermined and selected directions. Bradley had also set up artillery batteries on each flank. With daylight, the men on Hill 317, enjoying unexcelled observation, called the artillery fire right down on the Germans’ heads.11
Simultaneously, British rocket-firing Hurricane and Typhoon fighter airplanes swooped down on the enemy, firing rocket after rocket into the massed tanks. They were soon joined by American Lightnings, Thunderbolts, and Mustangs from General Pete Quesada’s 9th Tactical Air Command. Thirty years later, Quesada still recalled that triumphant attack. He told Lewin, “You know, Brad and I never used to talk together about our ULTRA signals. We just took it for granted that each of us knew what was in them. But I can still see that moment when we stood with those signals in our hands, and grinned, and said, ‘We’ve got them.’ ”12
Hitler promised Kluge extensive air cover. He said that every Luftwaffe plane in France would be thrown into the battle. But not one—not one—appeared in the sky over Mortain that August 7. Where were they? Mostly shot up. Thanks to ULTRA, the Allies were able to engage them the moment they got off the ground from their airfields around Paris. Only a few got out of sight of their airfields; none reached Mortain.13
On the afternoon of August 7, Kluge sent a gloomy report to Hitler’s headquarters. He had lost fully half his tanks, he said, and was still losing them. The attack had been brought to a standstill. He wanted to disengage what was left of his three panzer divisions at Mortain and use them to blunt the Canadian drive at Falaise.14
Hitler was furious. He thought that Kluge had launched the attack prematurely, hastily, and carelessly. In Hitler’s view, he should have waited for the arrival of three more armored divisions, on their way to Mortain, and then made a truly massive effort. From Hitler’s point of view in East Prussia, that made sense; from Kluge’s point of view in Normandy, to wait meant that the units already assembled would be destroyed in place by Allied artillery, air, and naval fire.
But Hitler was in charge, not Kluge, and Hitler gave the orders (they were read by Ike within an hour of Kluge’s reading them). “I command the attack be prosecuted daringly and recklessly to the sea,” Hitler began. “Regardless of risk,” he wanted three panzer divisions withdrawn from the Fifth Army facing the Canadians and committed in the Avranches sector “to bring about the collapse of the Normandy front by a thrust into the deep flank and rear of the enemy facing Seventh Army.” To consummate what to him had become the master stroke of the Western campaign, Hitler concluded, “Greatest daring, determination, imagination must give wings to all echelons of command. Each and every man must believe in victory.”15
Kluge, despondent, told one of his subordinates, “I foresee that the failure of this continued attack can lead to collapse of the entire Normandy front, but the order is so unequivocal that it must be obeyed.”16
The U. S. 30th Division could not by itself withstand an assault from six German armored divisions.* Bradley sent in the U. S. 2d and 3d Armored Divisions to meet the German spearheads, along with two infantry divisions to strengthen the flanks and provide additional artillery fire. Meanwhile other units continued to move through the gap between Avranches and the sea, then drive north toward the German rear or east toward Paris.
By nightfall of August 7, the battle that had begun at midnight was essentially over, despite Hitler’s preemptory orders to Kluge. American artillery batteries set new records for shells fired; they operated on the premise that it was better to waste shells than miss a possible target. The air forces had flown hundreds of sorties. As a result, of the two hundred or so German tanks involved in the initial assault, only twenty-five were left the next morning.17
Although Hitler continued to wallow in his fantasies and order attack after attack, the Battle of Mortain was over. Little remembered today, it was nevertheless a great Allied victory. The elements that made it possible included American mass-production techniques, which provided the fighting men with well-nigh unlimited artillery ammunition and virtually complete air cover, excellent tactical dispositions, the courage and skill of individual American soldiers (especially those in the 30th Division), and calm, cool, firm leadership at the top. But, clearly, the most important element in the victory was ULTRA.
Ironically, August 7 was the last day of the war that ULTRA would be decisive. The main reason for this development was that as Eisenhower went over to an all-out offensive, the Germans had to react to his moves, rather than the other way around, as had been the case during the battle of the buildup and at Mortain. Another reason was Monty’s rather strange disregard of ULTRA information. Winterbotham complains throughout his book, The Ultra Secret, about Montgomery never acknowledging ULTRA, much less thanking all those involved in getting ULTRA’S priceless information to him. That Monty hated to share the credit for a victory is clear enough, but why he frequently ignored ULTRA information (or other forms of intelligence, for that matter) remains mysterious. The best example of this phenomenon is Mortain.
By the morning of August 8, the Allied High Command knew that Hitler had ordered most of the armor in the Fifth Army to leave the Canadian front near Falaise and proceed to Mortain, there to participate in the attack. Although it was true that if this mighty force had managed to break through to the sea beyond Avranches it would have created serious problems for the Allies, especially Patton’s Third Army, it was also true that Bradley had by then gathered together two armored and five infantry divisions to greet the German tanks. There was, in fact, almost no chance at all of a German breakthrough, as Kluge himself knew full well. Under these circumstances, Monty’s most logical move would have been to hold back the Canadians until the panzers had departed from their front, wait for Kluge to commit his tanks at Mortain, and then unleash the Canadians for a drive to and through Falaise, which would completely sever the supply and communications lines of two entire German armies.
But Monty had been under extreme pressure from Ike for weeks to get going. He knew that Ike’s impatience with his performance was shared by all the staff at SHAEF, British and American alike, and that even Churchill was beginning to growl. After all, Monty had promised to take Caen on D-Day, but he had not gotten it until nearly the end of July, and since then had hardly advanced beyond Caen. Tedder had urged Eisenhower to demand of Churchill that Monty be relieved of his command. He would not go that far, but as Butcher recorded, “Ike keeps continually after Montgomery to destroy the enemy now.”18
So Montgomery, the general who usually waited until the last button on the last private was in place before attacking, attacked too soon. On the morning of August 8 he sent the Canadians forward again, toward Falaise. The attack came just after the 10th ss Panzer Division had started its move to Mortain, and just as the 9th and 12th SS Panzer Divisions were starting to follow along the same route. The Canadian attack gave Kluge the excuse he needed to cancel the whole movement; he kept the tanks in place to fight the Canadians. If Monty had only waited twenty-four hours, he could have had Falaise the next day. As it was, the Canadians ran into the massed fire of two German armored divisions and made little headway.19
Eisenhower and Bradley, meanwhile, were looking forward to the prospect of devouring two entire German armies whole. After hearing the latest intelligence reports on the morning of August 8, and after studying the map, Eisenhower decided that Patton ought to turn north in order to link up with the Canadians behind the German lines, thus encircling the enemy’s Seventh Army and Fifth Army. He went to Bradley with the idea, only to find that “Brad had already acted on it,” a typical example of the similarity of strategic thought between the two generals.
Bradley told Patton to drive on to Argentan, concentrate his forces there, and wait for the Canadians to come to him through Falaise. Eisenhower drove to Monty’s headquarters “to make certain that Monty would continue to press on the British-Canadian front.”20
Kluge, meanwhile, in accordance with his orders, continued to attack on the Mortain front. The men of the 30th Division who were encircled on Hill 317 continued to call in devastating artillery fire from the massed batteries of the division’s artillery. By day’s end there were one hundred wrecked tanks around the hill. The Germans had attacked again and again in an effort to take the high ground, and although they killed or wounded more than half the seven hundred men on Hill 317, the rest held out. The 30th Division as a whole lost almost two thousand men during the battle. German losses were much greater. As the closest student of the battle, Martin Blumenson, observes, “What the Mortain counterattack might have accomplished seemed in retrospect to have been its only merit.”21
By continuing to attack, Kluge was doing exactly what Eisenhower and Bradley hoped that he would do—sticking his head farther into a noose that would be drawn tight when the Canadians and the U. S. Third Army linked up at Argentan. Patton was making spectacular progress toward that link-up; the Canadian offensive, however, was going slowly. By August 10, Kluge realized that his only hope for escape lay in an immediate withdrawal behind the Seine, but Hitler insisted that he continue the offensive at Mortain. Finally, after an exchange of messages and a telephone conversation, Hitler consented to allow Kluge to suspend the westward attack, shorten his lines, and then strike Patton’s leading corps in order to keep the supply lines open. It seemed already to be too late. The German Seventh Army had lost its rear installations and was depending on the Fifth Army for supplies. The Germans were on the verge of an incredible debacle.
On August 12, Patton’s Third Army spearhead, the XV Corps, reached Argentan. The Canadians were still eighteen miles to the north and making only slight progress. Patton, impatient, wanted to cross the boundary line Bradley had established in order to close the gap. He pleaded with Bradley on the telephone, “Let me go on to Falaise and we’ll drive the British back into the sea for another Dunkirk.”
Bradley refused to change the boundary, and Ike backed him up. Not until August 19 did the link-up occur, too late to do much good, according to Patton, who blamed Monty, and beyond him Ike. At times Patton could be almost idolatrous of Eisenhower; at other times he could be heard to complain, “Ike’s the best damn general the British have got,” meaning that Eisenhower was too much under Monty’s and Churchill’s influence.
Twenty-three years later, in 1967, when he was reviewing a summary of the criticisms of his generalship at Falaise, prepared as part of the annotation for his official papers, Ike wrote by hand, “Some of these writers forget that grand tactics and strategy must be decided upon by people who are in possession of the overall situation in such matters as relative strength, mobility and logistic possibilities. Patton was an operational officer—not an overall commander.”22
What Eisenhower meant was that Patton seemed to think that all he had to do was send the XV Corps forward until it linked up with the Canadians, at which point the encirclement would be complete and the Germans would surrender. But as Eisenhower and Bradley knew, from all their intelligence sources, capped by ULTRA, there were two complete German armies inside the trap. Although they were short on supplies, they still could maintain a tremendous rate of fire, from heavy artillery through tank to small arms. To encircle is not to destroy. Already ULTRA indicated that the Germans would be fighting their way out. Hitler had relieved Kluge, but gave his successor, General Model, a free hand. Model started a full-scale retreat.
Beyond ULTRA revelations, Eisenhower was relying on intelligence estimates of the enemy’s intentions that were, basically, his own. At its highest level, intelligence is more a hunch than a scientific matter. It has to be felt rather than studied, sensed rather than calculated. At this level, intelligence is an art form, a prediction about what the enemy will do before the enemy knows himself. Eisenhower was a master of it. One of his most notable traits as a human being was his sensitivity, his keen awareness of the other man’s point of view. Those who worked with Ike have told of his concern for the well-being of his subordinates, of acts of kindness or awareness. One of the secrets of his success was his hardworking staff; his staff slaved for him precisely because he was concerned about them, as people. This tremendous concern gave him unmatched insights into other people’s minds, and thus paid off with the most important kind of intelligence. From Hitler in 1945 to Khrushchev in 1959, Ike seldom misjudged his opponents.
As at Falaise, where Patton, and many others, assumed that the Germans in the West had had it, that their defeat was as obvious to them as to the Allies, and that surrender was imminent. Eisenhower held a press conference on August 15 and the reporters kept asking him how many weeks it would take to end the war. Furious, “Ike vehemently castigated those who think they can measure the end of the war ‘in a matter of weeks.’ He went on to say that ‘such people are crazy.’ ” He reminded the press that Hitler could continue the war effort through the Gestapo and pointed out that the German leader knew he would hang when the war ended so he had nothing to lose in continuing it. Ike said that he expected Hitler would end up hanging himself, but before he did he would “fight to the bitter end” and most of his troops would fight with him.23
He was almost exactly right. All he missed was the method Hitler would use to kill himself.
Eisenhower was right in the short run, too, at Falaise. The Germans rejected the easy way out, surrender, and fought to hold open the jaws of the trap that were slowly closing on them. They, not Patton, made it a Dunkirk in reverse. Despite Eisenhower’s plea, in an order of the day, for every man in his command “to make it his direct responsibility that the enemy is blasted unceasingly by day and by night, and is denied safety either in fight or flight,” it was the Germans, not the Allies, who made the supreme effort at Falaise.24
Lewin puts the last phase of the battle that began at Mortain into its proper perspective. No one, he writes, “who has not faced a German panzer army fighting for its life has the right to criticize those who have done so and apparently failed.” The Germans were “struggling for survival.” The failure at Falaise, if it can be called a failure, “was due to … a simple inability, on the Allies’ part, to destroy the German will to survive.”25
The truth is that Mortain/Falaise was a great victory, thanks in largest part to the superb defense at Mortain, which was itself based in equal measures on the courage and fighting ability of the men of the 30th Division and on ULTRA. Together with the Allied air forces and the Canadians, they gave the Germans a hell of a licking. Some 50,000 German troops were captured, another 10,000 killed, while about 40,000 got away.
Those who escaped left their equipment behind. An officer who had observed the destruction of the World War I battlefields found that “none of these compared in the effect upon the imagination with what I saw near Falaise. As far as my eye could reach on every line of sight, there were vehicles, wagons, tanks, guns, prime movers, sedans, rolling kitchens, etc., in various stages of destruction. I stepped over hundreds of rifles in the mud and saw hundreds more stacked along sheds. I saw probably three hundred field pieces and tanks, mounting large-caliber guns, that were apparently undamaged.”26
The full extent of the destruction is best measured in the August 28 strength report of the Fifth Army. It had only 1,300 men, twenty-four tanks, and sixty pieces of artillery.27 The full magnitude of the victory is best seen in the events that followed, as described by Adolph Rosengarten, the SLU with the U. S. First Army: “Many German Seventh Army formations escaped from the pocket and fled, although not in good order, to the German frontier. As it was three hundred odd miles away, following them was fun. We drove through the lovely French countryside in the August sun and pitched our tents for stands of two or three nights in the kitchen gardens of some beautiful chateaux.”28
IN THAT DASH THROUGH FRANCE, ULTRA played little role, mainly because the Germans were so disorganized it was almost a case of every man for himself, which in turn meant there was little in the way of direction or control being exercised by radio. When the Germans did not use the radio, ULTRA was useless. The French people, however, provided an alternative source of information that was as accurate and trustworthy as ULTRA. In every village between the Seine and the German border, GIs and Tommies could count on the local inhabitants telling them exactly when the last German formation went through the village square, in what direction, with what equipment, and in what numbers. This priceless information made the pursuit effective and continuous. The Germans never got a chance to catch their breath.
Until they reached the German border. Suddenly the Allies, who had seen all and known all, were blind. Local inhabitants were sullen and noncommunicative instead of friendly and informative. Inside their own country, the Germans had secure telephone lines, and ULTRA could consequently hear nothing. Eisenhower, who until now had been well informed about his enemies’ strengths and dispositions, was suddenly shut off from such information as completely as he would have been had a steel wall descended between the contending sides. He needed to prove himself as a commander who did not need virtually a complete set of the enemy battle plans in order to win. But if he was now in the inferior position with regard to intelligence, he commanded the superior force, not only in air power, but in tanks, men, artillery, and fighting formations.
His biggest problem was overconfidence. After the dash through France, his officers and men felt that the Germans in the West were finished, done, kaput. All that was left was the formality of occupying Berlin. The heady success of the liberation of France had its effect everywhere, even in the mind of the supreme commander. He was quite confident he could wrap the whole thing up by Christmas. He even made a bet with Monty about it.
* The 30th continued to fight magnificently, even though surrounded, in an action that ranks with that of the 101st Airborne at Bastogne in December; unfortunately the 30th Division has never received the credit it should have for this heroic stand.